Humans generally prefer to be in the company of nice humans, but bonobos, our closest living relatives, gravitate toward aggressors.
This is the experiment that proved it:
Anthropologists from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Duke University showed, to twenty-four bonobos in a sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cartoons in which a Circle was trying to get up a hill; a Triangle was helping it, and a Square was hindering it. (The cartoons may have been better than my version.) Then, the bonobos were offered pieces of fruit, under paper cutouts of either a triangle or a square. More went for the fruit under the square.
How’s that for unconvincing?
I rather often quote what I’ve read of ln Scientific American, but my studies show that not all the research described in it (this, entitled “Bonobos Like Bullies,” was in the “Advances” section of the April issue, and was derived from the January Current Biology\) is worth quoting.
Maybe the bonobos were afraid the circle would roll off the top of the hill and get hurt so they thought the square was the hero of the story.
Hmm, my first thought was what kind of fruit? Same fruit under both figures? Were the square and triangle different colors? Are the Bonobos even able to perceive and translate from two dimensional to three dimensional. Or were the “hill” and circle perceived as just squiggly lines? Too many variables for my taste (unless the fruit was watermelon, Yum!) A little humor there. I don’t like to think of myself as snarky, but this sounds like a great science fair project — for elementary ages.
Even given the limited knowledge I have about Bonobos, this is rather difficult to accept. They are a sociable species, and the vagueness of that drawing doesn’t seem to provide much to interpret.